Thursday, February 19, 2015

The photo has little to do with this post. I couldn't find an accurate photo on the web of the snowflakes falling here today, but I came across this pretty little scene and decided to nab it. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a name to give to credit to. Suffice to say, it wasn't me that took it as I have most of the photos on my blog.

Back to my point. After I had fallen on my face several times while attempting to snowshoe in freshly fallen and drifted snow, I dragged my butt to my garden swing to spend some quality petting time with my dog. It was very quiet at this point, snowflakes drifting down slowly and landing in Bear's fur. A big, fluffy black dog speckled with snowflakes is beautiful enough, but upon closer inspection, I noticed that the tiny individuals were shaped perfectly like a six petal flower. And I do mean perfect, and not just the odd one, all of them. With the way they were landing in and on the tips of his fur, they created a delicate, miniature flower garden. It's really too bad I didn't have my camera with me. Not to say I would have done the scene justice with my photography skills, but it would have been nice to try.

Maybe you would like to hear less about delicate, graceful snowflakes and more about the not so delicate and graceful girl behind this post. First things first, I'm not athletic. At all. I can walk, but that's about it. And after today, I'm not sure I'm holding onto that skill all that well. In my defense, the snow was fresh, deep and damn near impossible to see fluctuations in. I fell off a 3 foot drift. Yes, I measured it. I truly did not see it coming, just putting one foot in front of the other, and then in one step there simply was no ground and it was too late to pull back. I'm sure there was a small instantaneous prayer that it was only going to be a few inches, but alas, the higher power could respond that quickly and down I went. At least it was a soft landing. The falling and the landing was the easy part. Getting up was another story. I was quite buried, and when Bear noticed I was down, it was his opportunity to make matters worse by jumping on my back. It took some time, but I managed to stand up, put myself back together, find my toque and such, and start trudging along again. There were a few more falls on the way back home, but none so dramatic as the first. By the time I got back to the yard, fed the birds and landed on the garden swing, I was spent. Literally too tired to think, it was then that I noticed the beautiful snow garden forming on Bear's back and after a brief moment of reverie, I realized I was hungry. And just like that, the beautiful moment was over.

Monday, February 9, 2015

I'm very used to walking around the rectangular shape of our 10 acre parcel and frankly am getting quite bored with it. So I decided to venture outside our fence line into the neighbors field and down into our creek bed. It wasn't far, but it sure made a difference in how I felt about going for a walk. I would never attempt this without my trusty snowshoes.

Looking west, away from my yard. I could go a long way if my legs were up for it.

Looking down into the creek bed, where I'm headed.

Most of those willows are dead because the water table has been too high for too long.
And some of them are just old.

In the creek. My kiddos call this place the 'magical land' because of how it looks when the
creek dries up in the summer. It is a really neat experience. The ground is very spongy,
like walking on an extremely thick carpet.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

My dull, old black collar fell off yesterday, so I took the liberty of chewing it up to make sure it could never fit around my neck again. I was getting tired of my look, and was looking forward to changing things up a bit. I knew anything would be better than what I had but, I had no idea it would look this good. That red leather sure does look sharp in contrast with my black fur, don't you think?

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

January was relatively kind this year. Warmer temperatures allowed for a lot of time outside. I even dusted the snow off my garden swing and had tea out there a few times. The time of our sunrises during this month made it easy to enjoy every single one.
Between all those walks outside, I've been spending my time scrapbooking. My goal was to be caught up by the end of March, but it looks like I will be done by the middle of February!

It's too bad you can't see it, but a lot of those colors in the sky were reflecting in the ice around the yard. It was a very colorful morning.

This doggy was built for winter, and was often overheating on our extended walks. He was running around, ramming
his face into the snow banks. He loves when I make snowballs and throw them up into the air for him to catch
and then to eat.

﻿

We haven't had much snow this year, so it didn't take a lot of sun to create large, bare patches of lawn. And here I
thought those pogo sticks would only be a summer toy.

I did nothing special with this photo. Why it is so saturated with blue, I'm not sure. That gives you an
idea of my photography knowledge.